Room 515
by Deadlybitch14
Summary: Elena is a broken teenage girl, trying to find her way but losing hope, and Damon is a dark, suicidal, patient in the Psych ward of Mystic Falls General Hospital. When Elena gets sick, these two cross paths. Damon makes it his mission to break her, but falls in love along the way. RATED M FOR LANGUAGE AND SMUT IN FUTURE CHAPTERS
1. Chapter 1

AN: Hey, so this is my first fanfiction, though I write a ton. Please review and let me know what you think! Rated M for strong language and smut in later scenes.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. The Vampire Diaries and all characters within belong to their respective owners. I'm just borrowing for a bit

Room 515

Chapter One

Elena

It was pitch black outside, and I hadn't moved for hours. I just sat on the window seat in my room and tried to forget. The streetlights came on, flickering at first then lighting up my street with a blinding light. I knew they came on at 11:00 PM, but didn't bother double-checking the clock. I pulled my favorite, huge, oversized sweatshirt over my knees as I curled them to my chest. I wanted to cry, sob and scream until I passed out. But I couldn't. I couldn't do anything. I didn't just want to cry. I wanted to get angry, really truly angry. I had been mad a lot lately, but not how I wanted. I wanted blinding rage, because feeling rage was the first step to feeling, period.

When the person you love more than anything dies, they take a piece of you with them, and you'll do anything to live again without them. The sadness is infinite. You are broken without them, and like a little girl's broken music box, you just repeat the same sad song and spin in circles until someone finally just throws you in the trash.

I wanted someone to love me, the kind of love you see in movies and books. A strong passionate romance that was wild and untamed and true. But no, all I had was another friend I didn't need. Another person offering help and support I didn't want. I was sick of people saying, "I'm sorry". Sorry couldn't fix the past. Sorry couldn't make me happy. Sorry was a stupid fucking excuse for people who couldn't do anything. I hated it when people told me they were sorry. Sorry for what? Why are you apologizing because I am fucked up? Sorry was just a shorter version of "I pity you".

The sorrys haunted me, like a nightmare you can never wake up out of. Sorry was what my mom said a week after she slammed my head in a door.. I would rather people say "sucks for you" or anything other than sorry. I had enough of sorrys to last a lifetime and all I wanted now was for someone to say, "Okay, your life is totally fucked up. So what are you going to do about it?"

I wanted a challenge from a total stranger cause whenever I told myself that, it never worked. The people who love me are too involved. Fuck them. I could run away with a random person and never look back. Even life with a complete stranger would be better than this.

Sometimes I wondered to myself why I didn't just end it all. At first I thought it was because I was too afraid to hurt the people I loved, but whom was I kidding? I hurt them a little more each time I sunk a blade into my skin. I was just too selfish to let the people I loved go.

My brother Jeremy got home at midnight every night. After about a month I stopped asking where he went. The answer was always the same. "Nowhere". My mom came home around 2:30 am. Sometimes later if she found other bars still open at that hour, other times the bartenders let her stay a little late. She had become one of the local bar's best customers lately.

I wish dad were still alive. When dad was here I was never sad, Jeremy was home at 10:00 every night, the only alcohol mom ever had was a glass of wine at dinner on Sunday nights. He kept our family together, sometimes only by a string but we always figured it out.

A family cannot live after a member takes their own life. He was my best friend, and one day he took himself from me, and everyone else who loved him. He was charismatic, and charming, and funny, but like all stars, he burned bright until he imploded, and was just a flash of brilliant light in our memories. And all of us who happened to be caught up in his orbit were left floating in space without a source of light to guide us.

I can remember the day I found out too well. I wanted to forget the tears of my mother, the forlorn face of the school guidance counselor, the glassy eyes of my brother. Jeremy wasn't the same after that. He was the one who found dad, hanging in his and mom's old bedroom. The old bastard didn't even have the courtesy to leave a note.

Jeremy started staying out late ever since the funeral. He would go out in the morning for school and not come back until the last trace of the day was gone and a new one was about to start. Jeremy always came home totally wasted and smelling like weed and cigarette smoke. I tried talking to him, forcing him to do things, threatening him. Nothing worked; Jeremy wasn't talking to anyone anymore.

I shuddered and shook away the bad memories, rebuilding the walls around myself. After that day I vowed to never bring out those memories again. I hadn't since. People tried to get me to talk about it, but I shut them out.

Caroline wasn't there when it happened. Since it was in July she was at summer camp. She wrote me tons of letters when her mom told her though, but for a while it was just Matt and I wasting the summer away. It was the last summer of childhood.

Jeremy poked his head into my room.

"Mom's out cold on the couch. I'm going out."

I didn't acknowledge his message, but he didn't care. He just ducked back out of my room and clomped down the stairs. I waited until he was out the front door before reaching under the cushion of the window seat, reveling in the comforting feel of the razor blade hidden there.

I heard my mom stirring downstairs, and heard footsteps as she merely moved from the couch to her bed. I hated her guts. I hated her for giving up on Jeremy and I. I hated her for not being strong when we needed her. I hated her for doing this to our family. She didn't even care when Jer stayed out all night, or brought drunken girls home. I was disappointed in Jeremy, but could never hate him. He was my little brother. I just wished he would talk to me, to anyone. He stayed silent, high and unreadable.

So I sat trying to fight off the sleep that crept its way into my head. I knew that the minute I closed my eyes that the nightmares would start, and then they would lay dormant in my subconscious until I closed my eyes again.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Just a warning, the POV will change throughout the story. I'll tell you when it does, so hopefully that will make it less confusing.

Chapter 2

Elena

The next day was a Saturday, mom and Jeremy were out, and Caroline and Matt were dragging me to a concert for some band nobody's ever heard of. Caroline showed up at 4:00 to make sure I wouldn't ditch her. She barged into my room and headed straight for my closet. She looked at me sitting on the window seat, as she passed and stopped in her tracks.

"Holy shit Elena, you're a fucking twig. You need to eat more." Caroline swore more than anyone I knew. If you could get through a conversation without her swearing at you, something was wrong.

"Look Caroline, I'm just going to stay home tonight, I don't feel well." It wasn't a lie; I had been dizzy and achy all day. Caroline walked over to me and put her hand to my forehead.

"Well you don't have a fever and you're not projectile vomiting, so as far as I'm concerned you're fine." She flopped down onto my bed.

"Oh hey, by the way, can I borrow your eyeliner? I lost mine." I shrugged and let my head fall back against the white wood paneling of the window seat.

"Sure, why not." She leapt off my bed and ran into the bathroom to put it on, throwing thanks over her shoulder. A second later, I felt something warm trickling down from my nose to my lip. I lifted my hand to my nose to see if I was bleeding. I pulled it away from my face to see the back of my hand covered in blood. I tilted my head back, pinching the bridge of my nose, as I ran to the bathroom where Caroline was giving herself Cleopatra eyes. She turned her head as I entered.

"Holy fuck Lena! What the hell happened?" She handed me a towel as I desperately tried to stop the bleeding. My nose was gushing blood, and nothing was helping. Caroline started to panic after the towel became fully soaked in blood. I was becoming light headed from the blood loss. Caroline grabbed me another towel, and put the blood-drenched towel in the sink, running the water.

"I need to get you to a hospital. I don't have my car though, my mom dropped me off, oh god. What do I do?"

"Call Matt, he has a car. He can get here quicker than an ambulance. Tell him it's an emergency." It was though. I had almost gone through another towel as Caroline whipped out her cell phone and dialed Matt.

"Matt, get your ass over here now. Something happened to Elena, we couldn't stop the bleeding. We need to get her to the hospital and soon. She's losing a lot of blood." I heard Matt's muffled reply, and Caroline nodded quickly as if he could see her.

"Just get here quickly. Break as many laws as needed." She flipped her cell phone back shut and stuffed it into her pocket.

"He's coming, just stay calm. Take nice deep breaths" The problem was, I couldn't breathe. The blood was blocking off my nasal passages, and I could feel it dripping down my throat, making it hard to breathe through my mouth too. I probably sounded like a dying fish, bubbling and gurgling as I tried to breathe through the blood. I heard the front door slam, as Matt got here. He lived only a couple blocks away, so it wasn't too far a drive.

"WE'RE UP HERE!" Caroline called down to him. He ran through the downstairs of my house reaching the stairs in record time. He flew up them, probably taking them 3 at a time, before skidding down the hallway and into my bathroom, where Caroline was frantically getting me a third towel. I heard him gasp, and saw him run his hands through his hair, as he always did when he was nervous or stressed.

"Okay, I'll get her in the car. It's running out front. Elena, listen to me, where do you keep your insurance info?" I nodded towards the bag lying against my bed.

"Caroline, grab that and a pair of shoes and come on" He guided me down the stairs and out the door to his blue pickup truck, opening the door for me to get in the front seat. Caroline followed soon after, flinging herself into the back. Matt ran around to the driver's side, and got in. His hands were shaking so badly it took a few tries to get the key into the ignition. When he finally got the car running, he flew out of my driveway at 40 miles per hour. He took the roads about 60, blowing through stop signs and red lights. After a bit a cop started following us, lights flashing. Matt looked in his rearview mirror once and never looked back. He skidded into the hospital parking lot, screeching to a stop right outside the emergency doors. Several police cruisers pulled in after us, surrounding the car. Matt glanced at the cops then back at me.

"Care, take her inside. I'll deal with the police." Caroline nodded once, and got me out of the car, running with me into the hospital. The last thing I saw before blacking out was Matt surrounded by police officers, a look of sheer terror on his face.

Matt

After explaining to the police the situation with Elena, they let me go without any hassle. I ran into the hospital emergency entrance, where a circular desk sat right inside the doorway. I got to the desk, and grabbed the attention of the nurse sitting there.

"A girl came in her a couple minutes ago with a severe nosebleed. Where is she?" The woman checked her computer, and spoke.

"Are you family?" I thought for a millisecond.

"I'm her boyfriend" she nodded slightly and pointed down a hallway.

"Room 114" I thanked her quickly, before darting down the hall and into room 114. Caroline was talking to a doctor, and Elena was unconscious on a bed in the center of the room with an IV in her arm. I joined into Caroline's conversation with the doctor. She was explaining what happened at Elena's house.

"I don't know what happened, she just ran into the bathroom with a bloody nose, and it wouldn't stop bleeding, so I called Matt and he drove us to the hospital." The doctor nodded, while scribbling on her clipboard.

"What's your relationship with the patient?" I spoke up before Caroline could answer.

"I'm her boyfriend, and this is her cousin." The doctor eyed me doubtfully, but nodded again.

"Okay I'm going to go run some tests. You can stay in here with the patient. I'll get back to you as soon as I have some answers. Do you know her parent's number?" Caroline and I shared a glance, before answering.

"She's at work. We can't reach her until later." She nodded a third time, and walked out of the room. I walked over to the bed, and sat down next to it. Caroline came up behind me, and put a hand on my shoulder.

"Boyfriend and cousin?" I shrugged.

"Yeah, well you don't look enough alike to pass for her sister, and they wouldn't let you stay if I said you were her friend." Caroline dragged another chair to be next to mine.

"That makes sense, but why didn't you say you were her brother or something?" I had thought of this earlier, but knew it wouldn't work.

"Three reasons. One. Jeremy has been in here before. Two. We have different last names, and lastly, we're the same age, and look nothing alike." Caroline nodded in understanding, her blonde curls bouncing. Her hair was always in perfect ringlets, and silky smooth. It had been that way her whole life. Caroline, Elena and I had been friends since preschool. It was too weird to think that just few years ago we were in my tree house playing go fish, and now we were in a hospital with Elena unconscious, and Caroline and I worried out of our minds.


	3. Chapter 3

Caroline

Matt and I sat in that hospital room for what seemed like hours, waiting for either Elena to wake up or the doctor to come in with news. Matt pulled out his iPod after about 15 minutes of us sitting there together. He put in one ear bud and gave me the other, putting on some of my favorite music in a feeble attempt to distract from the situation at hand. So there we sat, listening to Best Coast, and trying not to think too hard.

Right after we listened to the two Best Coast albums Matt owned and were about to move on to Flobots, the doctor came back in. I tried to read her face, but like before, it was untouched by emotion of any sort.

Matt and I stood as she entered, eager for any information she could tell us about what was happening to our best friend. She walked over to where we stood, not looking up at our faces, just staring at the clipboard she carried. After a minute she looked up at us, face still blank, and glanced at Elena, who was deathly still on the bed. The feeble rise and fall of her chest, accompanied by the acidic beeping of the heart monitor were the only signs that she was still with us. The blue blood flowing through her veins had been cold since her father died, and she looked like a fragile porcelain doll lying in a child's makeshift hospital. The doctor cleared her chest bringing my attention back to her.

"We'll need to do more tests to confirm, but Elena had an extremely high white blood cell count. We're going to keep her here for now to monitor her cell counts over the next 2 days." I nodded, but didn't understand what a high white blood cell count meant. I was about to ask her, but Matt beat me to it.

"What does having a high white blood cell count mean?" The doctor took a deep breath.

"In most cases Leukemia" Matt sucked in a deep breath, and I let out a strangled half sob. I leaned into Matt's chest and he held me there, comforting me. He continued asking questions.

"What does it mean for her if she does have Leukemia?" I didn't know how he held himself together, but I was glad one of us was, and Matt always asked the right questions.

"Leukemia is cancer of the white blood cells and bone marrow. So she'll need to go through chemotherapy and have bone marrow transplants. I don't know how far the cancer has progressed or if it's spread yet, so I don't know how much treatment she'll need." Matt nodded stiffly, registering the information.

"What are the chances she'll make it through the cancer?"

"I really can't tell you at this point, it all depends on how early we've caught it." Matt nodded again, and hugged me closer.

"A phlebotomist will be in shortly to take some more blood from Elena for testing. If she tests positive for Leukemia, then we'll transfer her to the Pediatric Oncology ward upstairs later." Matt thanked her as she left, then turned to face me. He wrapped his arms around me, and just held me there for a couple minutes. Neither of us spoke, finally I broke the silence.

"Well fuck…"

Elena

I awoke to the blinding white light of a hospital room, and the sharp beeping of a heart monitor. I groaned, and blinked the fuzziness out of my eyes. Caroline and Matt were sitting next to the bed, leaning against one another, asleep. I wondered what time it was. There were no windows in my little room, no sun to gauge the time by. I wanted to ask them what happened, what was wrong with me, but they looked so peaceful asleep that I let them stay that way. I thought back to the sleepovers we used to have as kids, all three of us in sleeping bags in a circle, heads facing one another. We still had sleepovers sometimes, but less and less. It got more awkward when we hit puberty, but sometimes we all got together, for old times sake. Matt coughed and shifted in his seat, adjusting his head's position against Caroline's. I looked at him to see if his eyes were open.

"Matt?" I whispered, cautiously, to see if he was awake. He heard me, and his eyes shot open.

"Elena?" He mumbled, still half asleep. I smirked feebly at him as he sat up. I tried to stretch, but everything hurt.

"What happened to me?" His expression dropped a little, but he quickly caught himself.

"Do you remember this morning?" He asked cautiously. I nodded.

"The last thing I remember is you talking to the cops. Then everything's just blank." He smiled grimly, remembering the morning's events.

"You passed out right after Caroline got you in the doors. A couple nurses brought you in here, and gave you something to stop the bleeding, and some fluids to replace the blood you lost." He gestured to the IV in my arm.

"Do they know what's wrong with me?" I asked cautiously. Matt grimaced.

"They have some ideas." It was at that point I knew something was really, really wrong. Matt never avoided telling me things.

"What's wrong with me Matt?" He looked down at the floor, studying the white linoleum.

"You have Leukemia Lena." He whispered, his voice cracking at the end.


	4. Chapter 4

Matt

I watched silently as she absorbed the information I had just given her. I saw shock, sadness, anger, relief, and fear cross her face, but they were fleeting, in the end her face was completely blank.

"Okay" she said quietly.

"Okay?" I gasped, "How in hell is this okay? You could die Lena. This isn't okay." She shrugged.

"It may not be okay with you, but it's okay with me. If that's what happens then that's just the way things were meant to go, and there's nothing we can do about it." I couldn't respond to what she was saying. I just stared at her, opening and closing my mouth like a fish, trying to find words that were nonexistent. Elena stared absently at the plain white walls, not caring what I had to say. She had made up her mind to shut down, and collapse in on herself. The thing Caroline and I had been desperately trying to get her not to do for a month was happening before my eyes. I elbowed Caroline's sleeping form next to me, hoping that somehow she would know how to get through to Elena when I was helpless to do so. Caroline's eyes shot open as soon as my elbow connected with her ribs. She glanced at me, and then followed my gaze to Elena's still form. Caroline instantly saw what had happened. She got up quietly, and went over to Elena, resting her hand on her arm. Elena turned her head to look at Caroline, but her eyes were still completely lifeless, the light usually in them was gone, and replaced by a dull flatness, the kind that only severe depression could achieve. Caroline just wrapped her arms around Elena, and hugged her close, burying her head in Elena's shoulder. Elena stayed frozen though, her arms hanging by her sides. Her face remained expressionless, and she looked so utterly broken in that moment, that I knew we would lose her soon one way or another.

Caroline

After visiting hours ended, and the resident nurses kicked us out for the day, Matt and I walked to the car together in silence. Halfway there, I slipped my hand into Matt's, not in a romantic way, but in the comforting way of siblings. He didn't say a word at the actions, just held on to my hand for dear life, as if he let go, Lena wouldn't be the only one dying. Once to the car, I offered to drive, knowing Matt needed a chance to just let go of all pride and bravery he was desperately trying to hold on to. It had already been decided that we would both be spending the night at Matt's house though we hadn't talked about it. We hadn't had the need to. Matt's family was never home, so he always had extra beds, where as my mother was always home, and Max would have ended up on the floor, so I turned down Matt's street and pulled in his driveway. We didn't get out right away after I turned off the car. We just sat there in silent darkness, wishing that the day's events were just a dream. After 5 minutes of just sitting there, Matt broke the silence.

"What are we going to do? We still have to tell her family, and we both know she'll never be able to afford the medical bills, and I doubt Lena's mom will even be sober long enough to care that her daughter's dying." I could hear the quiver in his voice, and I reached out my hand, resting it on top of his shaking one.

"I know Matt, but for now, it's late and we're both sad and exhausted. Let's just go get some sleep." I saw him shake his head slowly in the dim light coming from the windows of his house.

"Matt, listen to me. Getting some rest won't make us care about her any less, and you know that. She knows that. We'll go back as soon as possible tomorrow morning okay?" He deliberated for a moment, letting my words absorb before nodding and unbuckling his seatbelt, and getting out of the car. I did the same, and we walked hand in hand into the house.

Elena

After Caroline and Matt left, a nurse came in to transfer me to the pediatric oncology ward. It was easy since I didn't have anything but myself to be transferred, so all she had to do was put me in a wheelchair and take me to the 4th floor, home of the oncology ward and the psychiatric ward. She put in me in an actual room, not just an area surrounded by a curtain. I guessed that meant I would be staying a while. I lay in my new, uncomfortable bed, and wondered what the fuck I ever did to deserve this. A dead father, an alcoholic mother, a drug addict brother, and now on top of it all, I had cancer. Feeling sorry for myself wouldn't do me any good though, so I slowly pushed myself up, ripped the IV out of my arm, and swung my legs over the side of the hospital bed. If I was going to be stuck in this hospital for a while, then I wanted to do some exploring. So I slipped on the flip-flops Caroline had grabbed as we fled my house this afternoon, and shuffled out into the blank white hallway of the hospital.

Damon

3 weeks, 4 days and 7 hours since they put me in this hellhole. All I fucking wanted was to end it all, not be forced into another stint in the psych ward of Mystic Falls general hospital, and back in room 515 where I supposedly belonged. The idiotic group therapy sessions where we were forced to talk about our feelings were torture, and if they hadn't taken away all items that could be used for suicide attempts, I would be out of here, though for some fucked up reason, fate didn't want me dead. My strategy was to keep trying until something worked, and then hello blissful oblivion. It was laughable that they tried to have bonding sessions in which the nurses gathered all the resident whack-jobs into one room and forced us to talk to one another. Nobody came here to make friends. We were all here for one reason, and one reason only. We were determined too unstable to go back home, and so we stayed here until some higher power decided that we were sane again, and sent us away. The people here were a breed all their own. There were the true nutcases who suffered from severe psychosis, violent maniacs, schizophrenics, people with disassociative identity disorder, people with severe panic disorders, and last but not least, my category, the suicidal depressioners, all of which could not survive in the outside world. At least the nurses loved me. In a sweet, morbid kind of way they were always overjoyed when I made another attempt at my life, and ended up back in room 515. This was my 3rd time being in Mystic Falls General for attempted suicide, and I wondered when they would just give up on saving me one night, and let me die.

To pass the time when we weren't in therapy or meals, I would wander the hospital halls until someone yelled at me to go back to my room. Tonight was no exception, so I put on my boots, and went into the linoleum-tiled hallway I called home.


End file.
